Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[X Prime]

Changing hearts and minds with reason is near-impossible. There's too much social pressure to conform, and people are sheep. They have to learn the hard way, when their kids if any get groomed.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Sometimes i wish we would go back to the days when euros and japs were the ones making worthwhile vidya while muricans were too busy making movie tie in # no 65

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Sometimes i wish we would go back to the days when euros and japs were the ones making worthwhile vidya while muricans were too busy making movie tie in # no 65

It's yet another example of competency crisis. Back then, even mid studios still had to make something playable even if the art direction was absolute garbage and didn't compensate for PS2 graphical limitations. Now the raw talent and discipline isn't even in game studios anymore so a lot of games aren't fine-tuned or optimized like they were in the past.

Also, the single worst design philosophy ever created was the popularization of Rogue-lite mechanics. Games are supposed to scale in difficulty to encourage player growth. Rogue-lites, by design, turn runs into gacha runs where skill is secondary to luck. Because procedural generation is random, developers cannot sufficiently scale difficulty with map design or expected equipment because they can never know what the player is supposed to have by mid or late game. If you don't have cloaking in your build in FTL, you do not have a chance of beating the final boss and that is not necessarily your fault. Maybe cloak dropped too early for you to have enough scrap to buy, maybe cloak didn't show up at all in store runs, which is why FTL's easy mode is to reduce enemy stats. There isn't any other choice because every element in that game is random otherwise.

 

[Matt Damon]

There's a weird, very vocal contingent of PC gamers who demand that EVERY game on PC be optimized for keyboard and/or mouse and it is perhaps the stupidest of all the many stupid hills that gamers decide to die on.

We live in this PC gaming golden age where there are almost no console exclusive games anymore and even traditionally PC-averse Japanese developers release first-rate PC ports on day one and yet that's still not good enough. We had to develop entire new controllers and control paradigms to make genres like 3D platformers practical and these faggots demand that those games play just as well on an input device that has effectively existed since the 1870s.

Also, the single worst design philosophy ever created was the popularization of Rogue-lite mechanics. Games are supposed to scale in difficulty to encourage player growth. Rogue-lites, by design, turn runs into gacha runs where skill is secondary to luck.

I absolutely agree. Even when I've finished such games, it feels so hollow because I know it was due to the right alignment of RNG and my mechanical or knowledge mastery of the game wasn't what put me over the top.

 

[The Last Stand]

We had to develop entire new controllers and control paradigms to make genres like 3D platformers practical and these faggots demand that those games play just as well on an input device that has effectively existed since the 1870s.

Like with Steel Battalion, Dance Dance Revolution or MechAssualt?

Kinect for Xbox One should had been the original commercial vision for the Kinect.

 

[skykiii]

Sometimes i wish we would go back to the days when euros and japs were the ones making worthwhile vidya while muricans were too busy making movie tie in # no 65

You wanna return to a time that basically never existed?

I mean yeah I can see how people (particularly people who grew up with console gaming in the 80s and 90s) might think that's how it played out, but the reality is its always been a mixed bag, from everyone.

Heck I'm sure there's some guys in Japan who are thinking "remember when everything good came from America?"

On that note another chimera that I've seen brought up on this very page (and is another common stereotype) is that Japanese devs were adverse to making PC games. Last I checked, the MSX, Sharp X68000, PC-8801 and PC 9801 were all PCs. The thing is we tend to not ever know about Japan's PC games until they get console ports and then those get translated. Just for example, the Ys series started out as PC games but most people in the west would probably say it started on either the Sega Master System or the TurboGrafx.

I linked to this in another topic but here's a playlist you might have fun watching.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Heck I'm sure there's some guys in Japan who are thinking "remember when everything good came from America?"

Lol lmao even

You wanna return to a time that basically never existed?

It did when the murican game industry shot itself in the foot during 83 and no it took a LONG time for murican vidya to be taken seriously again

On that note another chimera that I've seen brought up on this very page (and is another common stereotype) is that Japanese devs were adverse to making PC games. Last I checked, the MSX, Sharp X68000, PC-8801 and PC 9801 were all PCs. The thing is we tend to not ever know about Japan's PC games until they get console ports and then those get translated. Just for example, the Ys series started out as PC games but most people in the west would probably say it started on either the Sega Master System or the TurboGrafx.

Iirc metal gear and castlevania orginally started out on the msx but the reason is because for one japan is really insane about piracy ( nintendo is basically the japanese disney ) and two pc for a long time had a bad rep for being the place to get H-games on.

 

[Inafune Fanfiction]

WARframe? more like TROONframe.

 

[TVB]

WARframe? more like TROONframe.

 

[X Prime]

They're not exactly incorrect about that one though.

 

[Jaimas]

Sometimes i wish we would go back to the days when euros and japs were the ones making worthwhile vidya while muricans were too busy making movie tie in # no 65

That is not how game development happened.

Game development in the east and west constantly fed one another, even in the gaming Dark Ages. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and Ultima directly led to the JRPGs of the 1980s like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Fuck, Wizardry was popular enough to get an Anime OVA. It worked the other direction, too - the development of platformers like Super Mario Bros. and Shooters like Contra led to games like Gianna Sisters, Commander Keen, and the original Duke Nukem - with devs like early Id basically wanting to open the gates for making available solid side-scrollers for the PC platform.

Like Salvadore Dali said, someone who's inspired by nothing creates nothing.

Little-known fact: The gaming crash of 1983 only fucked console game development. And even then, good games got made, just got lost in the flood of drivel and bad financial decisions. That was an era where Quaker Oats had a fucking video game division, shit was dumb. If you had a gaming computer, like a Commdore or Apple II, you were mostly insulated from the effects, since people could still find all the usual uses for a computer that weren't video games to buy an early rig, and computer magazines at the time already covered early computer games in the way the early game magazines would later.

The western PC game development scene was still going strong the whole time. And you mostly have it to thank for the back-and-forth I mentioned above.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

Game development in the east and west constantly fed one another, even in the gaming Dark Ages. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and Ultima directly led to the JRPGs of the 1980s like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Given this i wonder why we never got any shooters from japan it wouldve been cool to see what we couldve gotten oh well atleast coded arms a thing ( i mean stuff like fps and tps )

the development of platformers like Super Mario Bros. and Shooters like Contra led to games like Gianna Sisters, Commander Keen, and the original Duke Nukem

Wait contra inspired duke well thats surprising to hear given the first two duki nukis look more like platformers
like super mario

The gaming crash of 1983 only fucked console game development

Thats what i meant when i said that only murican game development backfired given how console centric murican vidya scene was ( and still is to this day )

The western PC game development scene was still going strong the whole time. And you mostly have it to thank for the back-and-forth I mentioned above.

It was also because prior to sega and playstation pc was king in europe with nintendo barely having a market aside from the gameboy

 

[The Last Stand]

Whose bright idea was it to add boost jumping in CoD with Advanced Warfare?

 

[skykiii]

Given this i wonder why we never got any shooters from japan it wouldve been cool to see what we couldve gotten oh well atleast coded arms a thing ( i mean stuff like fps and tps )

That's honestly a really good question. I mean Japan gave us stuff like King's Field which was really good.

One statement I've heard is that Japanese gamers are prone to motion sickness when playing first person games so they don't sell as well over there. But I tend to hear this from places that parrot a lot of the usual east vs west myths so I don't believe it.

What I think is more likely is they probably did make some FPSes but they were never notable enough to get ported/translated.

Wait contra inspired duke well thats surprising to hear given the first two duki nukis look more like platformers
like super mario

I think @Jaimas was more saying that Japanese side-scrollers in general inspired the development of games like Duke, not that Duke was inspired by Contra specifically.

He's right though, there's an intricate web of cross-country influences. For a long time, basically if you were a game designer you were probably also an enthusiast who played a wide variety of stuff. Apparently the designers of the 2D Duke Nukem games had played Turrican--a game that was big in Europe but not really in the US--since they borrowed sprites from it.

I tend to feel like this is part of the reason modern gaming sucks. Rather than this cultural mixing pot, the different gaming cultures have instead started being really exclusionary and into playing up their cultural identities. So Japanese games have become REALLY Japanese, American games have become REALLY American.... and if a Euro game does something it would be cool for an American to improve upon, they're told "well, that's Europe. We don't do that around these parts."

One place where you see this a lot is RPGs. Another widespread cultural myth is that "Westerners like their RPGs open-ended, Japanese like theirs more linear and narrative." This is basically true now, but for a long time it was more accurate to say that the Japanese just liked RPGs more than westerners did, period.... just look at how many western-made PC RPGs got console ports in Japan, and in particular console ports that remained Japan-exclusive.

Of course, that would never happen nowadays--I highly doubt anyone is gonna do a Japan-only console port of something like Legend of Grimrock--though I'm not sure if that's because Japanese tastes have actually changed, or just due to the fact that nowadays being multiplatform and multi-lingual is basically the default.

Thats what i meant when i said that only murican game development backfired given how console centric murican vidya scene was ( and still is to this day )

The fuck are you talking about? American game development used to be very PC centric.

 

[Sugriva]

Keyboard and mouse generally suck for gaming. The only time I prefer one is when I'm playing an fps or a strategy game. A controller is far superior 99% of the time because it was designed for playing games with, not typing.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

There's a weird, very vocal contingent of PC gamers who demand that EVERY game on PC be optimized for keyboard and/or mouse and it is perhaps the stupidest of all the many stupid hills that gamers decide to die on.

We live in this PC gaming golden age where there are almost no console exclusive games anymore and even traditionally PC-averse Japanese developers release first-rate PC ports on day one and yet that's still not good enough. We had to develop entire new controllers and control paradigms to make genres like 3D platformers practical and these faggots demand that those games play just as well on an input device that has effectively existed since the 1870s.


I absolutely agree. Even when I've finished such games, it feels so hollow because I know it was due to the right alignment of RNG and my mechanical or knowledge mastery of the game wasn't what put me over the top.

Keyboard and mouse generally suck for gaming. The only time I prefer one is when I'm playing an fps or a strategy game. A controller is far superior 99% of the time because it was designed for playing games with, not typing.

I think i've lost the count of how many times i've seen seem people claiming they own $5000usd rig, but somehow the very notion of buying a $50 gamepad seems blasphemous to them.

Can't tell if they're just flat-out autistic or something, because genres like Metroidvanais, Souls Likes, 3D platformerss or Fighting games just don't work on a keyboard and mouse.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Can't tell if they're just flat-out autistic or something, because genres like Metroidvanais, Souls Likes, 3D platformerss or Fighting games just don't work on a keyboard and mouse.

I learned to wall jump in Super Metroid on a keyboard.

It's doable, but it sucks ass.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Given this i wonder why we never got any shooters from japan it wouldve been cool to see what we couldve gotten oh well atleast coded arms a thing ( i mean stuff like fps and tps )

There was a few. Outtrigger, House of the Dead, Quantum Theory (a Gears of War clone where you throw a hot chick at the enemies), Vanquish, and Binary Domain.

I think the problem is, for the most part, they weren't very good.

Whose bright idea was it to add boost jumping in CoD with Advanced Warfare?

Whoever it was that played Titanfall and realised CoD was about to be obsolete.

 

[Matt Damon]

adverse

"Averse".

On that note another chimera that I've seen brought up on this very page (and is another common stereotype) is that Japanese devs were adverse to making PC games. Last I checked, the MSX, Sharp X68000, PC-8801 and PC 9801 were all PCs.

It's like you're making a concerted effort to miss the point.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I wish the anti-mouse-and-keyboard-ists would shut up and mind their own business
inb4 MATI